• Australian Grand Prix

McLaren focusing on qualifying pace

Lewis Hamilton has stressed the importance of qualifying © Getty Images

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According to Lewis Hamilton, McLaren's main focus since the first race in Bahrain has been to close the gap in one-lap pace to Red Bull.

Hamilton qualified fourth in Bahrain while his team-mate Jenson Button struggled to eighth. In the race Hamilton progressed to third as a result of Sebastian Vettel's spark plug failure, but he admitted he was completely perplexed by the speed of the Red Bull driver's pole position qualifying lap.

"Our qualifying pace definitely appears to be quite a bit off," Hamilton told reporters ahead of the Australian Grand Prix. "It's definitely off the Red Bulls - I don't know where they found that time [in Bahrain]. You look at Vettel's lap and it was so much faster in the middle sector, as in the first and the last sector we were quite similar. I don't know, I guess as we go into the season it will start to highlight where we are losing those bits of time.

"But in the race, when the car's heavier, I think it is perhaps a little bit more balanced out and they generally feel a bit better when they have got heavier fuel, at least mine does. I think the most important part for us is to get the qualifying sorted, understanding how to get the most out of the car on that single lap. Clearly the qualifying position has even more of an impact than it did in the past."

McLaren is one of a number of teams that had to bring a new diffuser to Melbourne after the FIA closed a loophole in the rules that allowed the gap for the engine starter to be used for aerodynamic gain. Both McLaren drivers complained of a lack of downforce in Bahrain, but after talking to his engineers, Hamilton is confident the new diffuser will not make a difference to the cars performance.

"They said it doesn't make any difference," he said. "They just changed a small hole in the back of the floor. The hole is still there and they just had to tighten it up a bit, so hopefully it doesn't make any difference when I drive the car."

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